Paulie Malignaggi believes Conor McGregor would be 'nervous and paranoid' if he took on Jake Paul in an MMA fight.
Since dipping his toe into the World of fighting, Paul has had boxing matches with a number of MMA fighters including Ben Askren, Tyron Woodley and Anderson Silva. He is due to return to the ring in his first fight since losing to Tommy Fury when he takes on Nate Diaz in August.
A fight between Paul and McGregor is something that the social media star is keen on even if McGregor himself has shown little interest in taking on the younger brother of Logan.
Former World boxing champion Malignaggi doesn't see a fight between the two taking place, saying that McGregor 'has no balls' and wouldn't take such a risk.
"Jake has a high school wrestler background so he would not be totally out of his element in the cage. He'd need to be alert to his kicks, but McGregor had absolutely no balls. If you make him just a little bit uncomfortable, you are going to put yourself in a position where you might win the fight.," Malignaggi told Lord Ping.
“You can make him uncomfortable by beating on him - or if he's beating on you - if you just hang in the fight he begins to get nervous and paranoid - he's not a true fighter. He looks for the first window to jump out of. He's got athletic ability but his anxiety levels get high. That's why he gets so tired in fights.
“This guy posts pictures of him running up mountains, swimming 25 miles, bicycling through the desert - just to make himself look like he's Rocky during training. And then he gets in the cage and he's tired after 30 seconds. He's got no balls. There's no way you can get that tired unless your anxiety levels are through the roof. He gets scared in there.
“Jake just needs the ability to hang in there and he can start to trouble him a little. He can put himself in the position to win the fight. I think McGregor's boxing is brutally bad, but at this point, even in MMA, if you hang with him he will get uncomfortable.”
McGregor and Malignaggi have been at odds with one another for many years ever since the infamous clip of the two of them sparring was release in the build-up to McGregor's fight with Floyd Mayweather in 2017.
The clip appeared to show McGregor knocking Malignaggi down in sparring, something the American denied, and kickstarted the long-running war of words between them.
Incidentally, hen asked about Paul's upcoming fight with Nate Diaz in an interview with Ariel Helwani, McGregor refused to mention Paul by name and called him a 'donkey.'
The social media sensation responded to these jibes on his podcast a few days later, and sensationally claimed that he would 'beat the f***' out of McGregor.
"I think Conor McGregor is funny as f***," he said. "When I watch him talk s*** about me and he's like 'Yeah the lad is a bit windy, he's a f****ng donkey' I'm like 'Yeah bro', but guess what Conor? I'll beat the f****ng f*** out of you," said Paul.
"You can't box as good as me and I'm going to do to Nate what you couldn't, and that's knock him the f*** out.
"You're going to be sitting there with your new beer company that's failing, drinking it and realising that you p***ed your life away at the end of the bottle. You're going to say, 'Damn, I really thought no-one was gonna do what I did in this sport. I thought no-one was gonna be a bigger name and I was going to be the biggest forever', but you can't have both lives."
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